I personally don’t like Epic for paying developers for exclusivity deals, keeping games off other PC platforms for a year or more. Artificial scarcity is bad for consumers.
Which they don’t do. Their platform has very few features, and doesn’t even have a cart. (Well last time I booted EGS like a year ago).
They have almost no features and of the features they do provide, none of them are great. Their only “feature” is operating at a loss, subsidized by megacorps, for many years like Amazon to gain a bunch of market share.
Luckily for gamers, steam already existed so they couldn’t corner the market and enshittify the entire industry like amazon did.
It doesn’t really bother me since it’s still on pc anyway, it doesn’t matter massively where you get a game from (unless you specifically want drm free copies).
Even worse is that they do this while trying to paint themselves as the underdog against the Steam monopoly. It’s not only hypocritical, but also deceitful. A new monopoly is not a solution to an existing monopoly, but a solution to investments paying off.
Don’t forget them being hypocritical again for suing google/apple for being monopolistic because they don’t want to have to go through them for payment.
I do know what it is, and I don’t actually think Steam is one. They have a considerable market share, but they are by no means the only way to get games on PC, nor do they exercise their dominance in a way that stifles competition.
I’m pretty sure Tim Sweeny knows this as well, but he still calls it a “monopoly” whenever he has the chance.
They were sued in the EU for violating anti trust laws, lost and decided not to cooperate.
They’re currently getting sued for forcing devs to not sell their games at a lower price on other platforms.
Their marketshare is more than enough to consider them a monopoly, you don’t need 100% of the market to be one, you just need to be so implanted that you become the default solution. Google doesn’t have 100% of the market, it still is considered a monopoly for search engines
Why not say fuck the developers instead? They’re the ones accepting guaranteed income in exchange for exclusivity, maybe you should be mad at then for not taking a chance at the “influencer making your game popular enough that you recoup your cost” lottery.
They got paid for the exclusivity, after that if they don’t sell as much then so be it, but just releasing on Steam is like choosing to play the lottery as a retirement plan and signing an exclusivity deal is like having a job, one might pay tens of millions or nothing, the other you’re sure will let you buy food for the next couple of years.
There’s tons of games on Steam that the devs have put everything they had in it only to never see any success and then you’ve got games like Vampire Survivors where nothing happened for months until suddenly a YouTuber started playing it and it became a major success. And I mean, good for Luca (and eventually for his team), but for every successful small dev there’s tens of unsuccessful ones…
I did not enjoy the combat in the D:OS Larian games because I was so used to real-time with pause combat from the old Infinity Engine games. Will grab BG3 when it goes on sale in a year or so.
I’ve been playing a bit of CS2 for the past weeks. It takes me way back (I played with high-school friends 20 years ago till 1.6) and I definitely suck, but I’m having fun. It still lacks fun community servers imo, but I hope to see more of them soon.
My favorite game of 2023 was Outer Wilds. I got completely immersed inside and spent a lot of quality time uncovering the storyline. I tried playing the DLC but I did not enjoy it very much, text made more sense than images for me.
The game I spent most hours on in 2023 was probably DOS2, doing both solo and coop playthroughs. Will probably be replaced by BG3 in 2024 :)
@chloyster I started playing Verdun this week. I wanted to attend to their Christmas event. It's basically a mode after that incident in 1916 when some units of the armies fighting on the Western front began approaching each other. In the game you can play football (and the winning team wins the game basically), but you can also throw snowballs at other players and if they're hit, they freeze for a while. You can also send postcards via email to others if you go to the mailmen. Or via Facebook or Xitter (if I remember correctly). It would be great to be able to send these here on the fediverse, but eh...
How is noone screaming about Lethal Company? I have never had more fun that playing that game last few weeks. True its “short” even with mods but sooo worth it.
Replying to agree with your position on GoT. Kept trying it after it first released but some other game would always come up and take over. While I loved tears of the kingdom, Spiderman 2, and a slew of other releases this year, GoT strands out for me. I’m terms of gameplay, story, and definitely visuals. While not perfect in everything, it was amazingly good in so many ways. Glad I finally got around to it. Now to keep hitting that back pile of unplayed gems.
The first time I felt like I spent most of my time in cutscenes and figuring out what to do. The second time I just plowed through the main story and enjoyed the ride.
Baulders gate 3 for sure. I mean in a few months it’s already more than half the hours of my most played game. I love the characters and the way I can effect the outcome of different events, and I love exploring it all again with different character combos.
Even in the main series he’s been switching between power hungry destroyer of worlds (Galaxy, Wonder) and goofy bully with a Peach obsession (Sunshine, Odyssey) for a long time.
Yeah, RPGs (Square, Paper or M&L) often have him team up with the good guys when he’s been out-villained. He’s particularly depicted as incompetent in those, and usually kicked out of his own castle, it and his minions being one of the rare other things he cares about.
I remember back in Mario rpg he joins up with Mario and his crew, because his castle was taken and he was left with nothing. So he’s been a reluctant ally at times, maybe even against wario.
/u/EssentialCoffee@midwest.social (or anybody else) do you know when the keys expire? I still have keys left and I’m considering dumping them here in the hopes that somebody might be able to redeem them in time.
I finished (again) God of War 2018. I thought it was going to sour on me, just like how my 2nd playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn did (and subsequently my 1st playthrough of Forbidden West). But no, it’s still a very good game. Combat is simple but still satisfying, side quests aren’t excessive like Forbidden West, story is still good but less intense than TLoU. My only complaint is that the fast travel is just way too slow. I’m looking forward to Ragnarök now.
Here are some games that I really enjoyed playing/replaying last year- FINAL FANTASY XVI - Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion - Live A Live - PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo - Tactics Ogre: Reborn - The Case of the Golden Idol - Voodoo Detective - Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising - Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge - Shin Megami Tensei: Persona - Sword of the Vagrant - Tail Concerto - The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble - Wild Arms - Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana - Ys: Memories of Celceta - Zero Escape Trilogy - God of War
My top is probably FF16, I have soft spot for this type of siblings story, also loving the Asura’s Wrath section.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne